We just finished our Living Waters group at St. Thomas More’s in Kansas City. It was a hard group–a handful dropped out and the deep needs that remained in the group seemed overwhelming. It helped that we met in the sanctuary where we were constantly drawn up into the huge Crucifix above the altar, a reminder that He was assuming the unbearable. Just below, we raised a 10-feet image of the Divine Mercy where the flow of blood and water rose in our midst. We finished the group refreshed, grateful. Some members and team commented:

‘I came to Living Waters expecting others to heal me. I found a group of people all looking to Jesus for healing who directed me to Him. Now I look to Him.’

‘I’m a giver in my church, the one others look to for healing. Living Waters focused the Father’s loving attention to my needs. I am learning to listen to His voice in particular areas where I need Him more than ever.’

‘I am not as afraid any more of my brokenness. I can trust God when He reveals areas of blindness and deep need in me. I am secure enough in His love to see things as they are, confident that His truth is my freedom.’

‘I’m in a painful, vulnerable season of my life. I have renewed my love for Christ Crucified; my wound invites me into deeper intimacy with Him.’

‘I love the Divine Mercy! Through the eyes of my heart, I now see that my same-sex attraction has a place to go. I am filled with new mercies to give as I go.’

‘In my everyday life, I am surrounded by people who could care less about holiness. In Living Waters I discovered a people whose priority is to grow in holiness. I am grateful to have found walking partners; I must have them.’

‘As a small group leader, I would show up empty every week. And every week, each small group member would bring her gift and God would fill us all. He is the healer and He uses every member. Healing does not rest on me.’

‘I had never taught the material before. As I did, God confirmed the work He has done in me and took me deeper.’

‘Now I have a mission: to make this offering known to my church connections. I want Living Waters to flow where I live.’

‘This parish had an abusive priest years earlier whose sin came to light later, creating scandal and the familiar skepticism that the Church damages the vulnerable rather than healing them. Through Living Waters, I discern that Jesus is taking back ground from the enemy. God through His Church heals His lambs.’

Abbey closed our last meeting by reminding us all that Living Waters is an open door, a community of healing that one can re-enter at any time. It is a place where Jesus redirects our focus upon Himself in a safe yet challenging way. It is a healing home where we too become safe ‘homes’ for others to know Him more.

A tough woman careful to avoid the gaze of others hears a man asking for her help. She turns toward Him. Jesus needs water, yes, but more than that He wants to give her what she needs—mercy that will well up from her depths and satisfy her forever. We discover her morally broken state later on in JN 4; all that matters now is that Love has come to her and that Love alone can make her whole.

Chastity is all about wholeness. Far from the pale and passive face we ascribe to it, chastity gives generously, purposefully. ‘The successful integration of sexuality within the person’ (CCC#2337) means that we can be liberated from lust and rigorous self-concern and free to offer ourselves to others for their good.

Jesus embodied that self-giving as a man—as God yes, but most definitely as a man. He is tender and strong. Jesus is appealing, and probably as puzzling to the Samaritan woman as He was desirable to her. No matter: Jesus was clear in love; clear in what was best for her.

In that way, Jesus the merciful is also Jesus the chaste. Chastity means His gendered, sexual self is united—in no conflict–with His worship of the One. Seamless integrity: the chaste Son’s need for ‘water’ in whatever form was sourced in the River of His Father’s love for Him. Committed to the Father’s will alone, His very human encounters with women and men alike resulted in greater wholeness in their lives, as we shall see throughout these six weeks.

We are not Jesus, nor are we exact replicas of the pre-fallen pair who celebrated their loss of loneliness in bold, shame-free sexual love (Gen.2:18-25)! Today we live East of Eden, as inclined to shame and fear and exaggerated desire as we are generous self-giving. No matter. Though God’s image in us may be broken, it is not destroyed. Something deeper in us longs to become potent in love and lovely in response to it. While we have breath, we represent Him on earth as either male or female, of which the Catechism sings: ‘Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way’…their union grants them a share ‘in the Creator’s generosity and fecundity.’ (CCC#2335)

Bearing His image means that we can know this truth—you are a good gender gift. Marriage is but one expression of such gift-giving. Your masculinity is potent, capable of engendering life in others; your womanhood is creative in its exquisite response to such life. Whether single or married, chastity is the virtue that frees us to grow into the gift we are and to learn to offer that gift.

Scary yes. The Samaritan woman may have averted Jesus’ gaze altogether had He not met her with such kindness. Similarly, He meets us this Lent with Almighty mercy, longing only to unite us with Himself. He is the source of ‘living water’ who seeks to well up in us. Might we leave old ‘wells’ behind this Lent and journey with Him toward chastity, the art of generous self-giving?

‘Father of mercy, You made me and now You seek to redeem me. You know me better than I know myself. I ask for the mercy to linger in Your presence and wait for You. I am confident that Your eyes of Love will reveal what is truest and best about my humanity. I marvel at how I am made to be like You. I welcome You as my Source, the Love I need to live and to give as a sexual, gendered being. Spring up, O Well.’’

Anger cuts both ways. It can incite one to drive idols from the Father’s house; it can drive others to fill that house with idolatry.

We each face resistance to what we perceive as worthy goals. It helps to access the passion that motivates us to go against the grain. Anger may activate us to bore a hole through the hard wood of injustice, or at least what we perceive as unjust.

Maybe that’s the catch. What begins as ‘justice’ may devolve into a self-serving effort to get what we want, our way. In other words, our concept of ‘righteous anger’ can veil a selfish effort to justify ourselves.

People who have been mistreated often point to their wounds as justification for their defensive, angry behavior. They thus cherish the wound and brandish it like a knife in order to secure certain rights. When they bypass God with their wounds and in defining these rights, they run the risk of becoming despots, little gods who now seek to control others by virtue of the real injustices done to them.

Consider a woman who has been cheated on by her husband. Incited by real injustice against her, she can arise to hold the whole family hostage with her rage.

Or a man wounded by one creepy pastor or by a system that ultimately sides with the creep and not the victim. He like the betrayed wife is right to press through fear and expose that darkness. But anger too often morphs into an infectious stranglehold of hate (in this case, against the Church) which bars him from what could cure him.

The most obvious example of misplaced anger is gay activism. Citing real ills done to some children who are gender confused and claiming that suicide is immanent for any such confused soul who is not allowed to act out homosexually or get a sex change, activists have done a masterful job at changing how an entire civilization understands sexual brokenness.

Brokenness, what brokenness? We can no longer even speak of Jesus’ loving redemption of persons who repent from what Scripture defines as a perversion of God’s will for humanity in our ‘born that way, stay that way, get out of my way’ culture.

Still, anger can be a good thing. I am angry at what unfaithful men do to women and what clergy men can visit upon the vulnerable. And I am angry that the Church has often failed to understand such relational and sexual brokenness and to provide healing. That anger motivates me to do something about it. I want to go against the grain of a complacent Church that would rather play ‘nice’ than act decisively on behalf of damaged people. If she arose as the prophet, she may well begin to remove the stains that blemish her. She could become a healing community worthy of Jesus.

God got mad, so mad He drove idolaters from the Father’s house then submitted to misery in order to end ours at Calvary. His passion is always the litmus test for whether our passion will plunder or purify. In order for anger to motivate us rightly, we must submit our wounds to the One who bears them and cleanses them from bitterness and other infections. We must forgive our captors. I must continually lay down activists at the foot of the Cross—‘Father, forgive them; they know not their self-justifying ways.’

I want to arise and see and act on behalf of persons enslaved by a host of injustices. Let us be His witnesses, inviting them to kneel before the One in whom mercy and justice meet.

My friend and Lutheran Pastor Ole recently commented on Denmark’s (his nation) passage of ‘gay marriage’ last week, which now makes it mandatory for all churches to conduct such ‘marriages.’

I grieve for the church. I grieve that the church offends God by misusing His Name. Mostly I grieve for the young homosexual Christian who no longer has any clear direction and truth to follow. I grieve with everything within me.

Ole was among the first international interns we had at Desert Stream in the early nineties. A same-sex struggler, he fought hard for his healing. Now alongside his wife and many children, Ole fights for the freedom of same-sex strugglers throughout Denmark. His light shines brighter than ever.

As the state and state church bend the knee to distorted ideas about homosexuality and marriage, Ole is committed to reflecting Jesus’ light. He knows he must. How else will a generation know the truth that can set them free from gender disintegration?

Ole reminds me of why we keep on insisting that Jesus sets men and women free from the domination of same-sex attraction and frees them to resume the journey to whole heterosexuality.

Why? Young people with same-sex attraction grow up in a culture that irrationally insists on their baptism and confirmation as citizens of a queer nation.

Who will endure the shame? Who will risk being seen as a hater or bigot by naming homosexuality for what it is: a symptom of personal brokenness that can be resolved through Christ and His healing community?

That’s why the Oles of this world shudder at ‘gay marriage’; it wholly misrepresents what homosexuality is to a vulnerable generation.

That’s why we endure the shame of once again testifying to our weakness and to our healing process.

Our stories point to the One who led us into all the truth necessary to grow beyond the ‘gay self.’

The heterosexually-immoral world cannot tell that truth; they are asleep in their compromise. Reparative therapists aside, the clinical community sleeps with gay activists and have lost objectivity. Even the church is no longer sure if her Savior’s blood can transform the same-sex struggler. She is the worst offender; she sleeps in the light.

Like Ole, we grieve when we witness the devolution of our fellow humanity. We grieve especially for the young ones left ‘shepherdless’ by the blind guides of today. But we grieve unto hope, the light of Christ, and pray that we might reflect Him more brightly to the world and worldly church.

But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise You more and more.My mouth will tell of your righteousness, of your salvation all day long.I will proclaim Your mighty acts, O Sovereign Lord…Since my youth, O God, You have taught me,and to this day I declare Your marvelous deeds.Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, until I declare Your power to the next generation, Your might to all who are to come. (PS 71: 15-18)

Our most powerful witness in this hour of ‘gay marriage’ and other injustices are our wounds. Raised with Him, secure in love, we must reveal our scars of sin and shame. The servant is not greater than His master. If the Glorified Christ is to this day ‘a Lamb, looking as if it had just been slain’ (Rev. 5:6) then we should be unashamed to declare our brokenness.

Jesus’ humiliation has been eclipsed with glory. So is ours, as we testify of how His mercy has washed us and solidified the new creation.

Over lunch the other day, a friend recounted his healing story. To do so, he began with his shame, which was founded upon a history of early childhood sexual abuse. Staggering into young adulthood with same-sex attraction, he sought the help of two pastors who abused him sexually and spiritually.

He vowed to trust no-one. Yet he knew Jesus loved him and continued to love him. Still, he could not let Jesus in close as such intimacy always meant sexual violation to him. Jesus respected his limits.

One night in the throes of gay sex, he became aware of Jesus’ presence. In a still small voice, Jesus said: ‘I am waiting for you.’ This young man kindly excused himself and fell on his face before faithful Jesus. Soon after he joined a Living Waters group, then another, found a skilled therapist, and currently serves alongside his wife in raising a family and helping others overcome their shame.

This man represents the countless men and women who have been raised from the dead of sin. Aware of sin’s complexity yet more in touch with the Mercy that saved them from it, they now proclaim how Glory has eclipsed shame. Resurrection flares from these wounds made visible.

Such courage ignites a blazing torch that draws the broken to Mercy. I wept as I listened to his story and saw the light of gratitude and hope in his eyes. I glimpsed Jesus; this man offered me his wounds, I put my hand in his nail-scarred hands and feet. Like doubting Thomas, I believed in Jesus afresh.

‘Gay marriage’ would be a none-issue if all the faithful made known their scars related to homosexuality. Risen with Christ, our wounds yet visible, we magnify Mercy and turn false justice on its ear.

‘If no-one said: ‘I die but I shall live’, then there would be no hope for those who suffer. All suffering would be senseless, destructive pain; all grief would be the worldly sorrow that brings forth death. But we know people who have lived and suffered differently. There is a history of resurrections, which have significance for others.

A person’s resurrection is no personal privilege for one’s self alone. It contains within itself hope for all, hope for everything.’ Dorothy Soelle